Today I sent this off as a letter to the times (via
letters@thetimes.co.uk):
"I fear that your correspondant Tom Whipple is making a number of mistakes in discussing tidal power as a possible energy source. La Rance, the French tidal plant, was indeed opened in 1966, and has just finished paying back its construction costs, which is why EDF can now claim that future power from it will be cheap. But if such a system was so wonderful, perhaps one might ask
why few if any other such stations have been built, anywhere. The answer is that one is going from something that is unreliably unreliable (wind), to something that is reliably unreliable. The tide changes four times a day, so stations such as La Rance produce zero power four times a day, and thus need backup. Some argue that one could have another tidal station on another coast that would fill in, but few sites are suitable.
What is more egregious about renewables is that the regime has been set up so that renewable sources apparently don't pay for their grid connection, nor for any backup that is required when they don't produce power. Any reasonable person might imagine that a new system connected to the grid would be expected to produce a continuous flow of power, otherwise statements such as "could power up to 100,000 homes" have no meaning whatever.
If one is going to have a renewable-powered grid, with enough backup to cover the dunkelflauts we get in winter (at least one, sometimes more, every
winter), then why not just build the backup in the first place (SMRs come to mind), and not bother with the wind farms at all.
And we are not building Hinkley Point; EDF is, and my understanding is that
EDF is paying for that, and that the UK customers will only start paying (at the agreed price) once it is commissioned and running. Also that the agreed price includes the decommissioning costs."
We've had a number of posts to recent threads on this topic; could I suggest that some of you gather together salient points on this topic and send in your own letter? You'd need to attach your address/phone at the end - but that's
the only pre-condition AIUI.
--
Lady Astor: "If you were my husband I'd give you poison."
Churchill: "If you were my wife, I'd drink it."
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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